Based Camp - US Public School is Not Bad—It’s A SCAM!

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I'm being driven crazy

00:00:06.480 by our son. The only thing he talks about with regard to his school experiences are

00:00:12.120 fundraisers and donations. She says this, and I am absolutely serious. I have never,

00:00:19.740 and I ask my kid every day, what'd you do to school today? What'd you learn in school today?

00:00:24.060 I'll get some vague notion, like numbers, or like maybe there was a book. If it was a fundraising

00:00:30.800 event, they remember every effing detail. I'm sorry, he does not talk about books that they read

00:00:37.760 or any educational activity. Maybe he talks about like playing around with some friends,

00:00:43.180 but no, this week alone, Malcolm, this week alone, we've been repeatedly hammered about three things.

00:00:50.400 One, picture day retakes. Two, donating candy for decorating gingerbread houses because they

00:00:57.040 canceled the one field trip of the year. And instead of making gingerbread houses that day,

00:01:02.360 but God forbid they provide the supplies for gingerbread houses. And then three, participating

00:01:08.480 in the readathon fundraiser for the school. Three school fundraiser activities. One week,

00:01:15.020 one randomly sampled week of the school year. And this is becoming, oh, I don't think that,

00:01:21.560 and I think what you're going to go into, this isn't just our school district. The school system

00:01:25.600 in the United States has become basically an MLM scam. It teaches kids almost nothing and is

00:01:32.260 completely dedicated to milking as much money from parents as possible. And yes, and this comes at a

00:01:37.540 time when it is more clear than ever that U.S. public schools are failing. You know, this isn't just

00:01:42.640 an issue of them being turned into MLMs. They're also utterly and completely failing on X. I log on

00:01:49.180 to X this morning, of course, after an evening of my son hounding me for money, right, from the school

00:01:54.060 because he's been indoctrinated not to learn to read, but to raise money for them. And then I see

00:02:01.120 trending on X that a University of California, San Diego report shows placements into remedial math

00:02:08.200 courses have jumped from 32 students in 2020 to 921 in 2025, or 11.8% of freshmen. 10% of freshmen

00:02:19.740 are in remedial math, despite high school GPAs averaging 3.74 in May, claiming calculus experience.

00:02:27.620 Placement tests revealed gaps in basics like fractions and word problems.

00:02:32.900 Is this, wait, this is policemen, you said? No, this is students at UC San Diego.

00:02:39.060 Oh, wow. The University of California at San Diego. A good, like a decent school. My mom went there.

00:02:45.320 Not, I mean, you know, she wasn't, she, I think she was smart. I, I consider her to be smart. But anyway,

00:02:52.180 the average GPA of a student going into UC San Diego is 3.74. 3.74.

00:03:00.440 3.74. Yeah, 3.74. That's a decent GPA out of 4.0. That's a decent GPA. I didn't have a 3.74.

00:03:06.180 Yeah. So, I mean, people are pointing to COVID learning losses and test-free admission since

00:03:11.780 2021 and more students from under-resourced schools. But let's, let's, let's be clear here.

00:03:18.180 I think an underrated thing that no one is really talking about is this MLM thing. So we're going to

00:03:25.860 go into it. I want to talk about this today. We're going to talk about other underlying factors,

00:03:31.720 money in schools, but I think the MLM thing is- More money does not make schools better. I want

00:03:38.320 to make this clear. Are you going to go into- We're going to go into that, Malcolm. We're going to go

00:03:41.480 into that. But I, we're going to start with the very colorful world of MLMs because if you're not in

00:03:45.820 the US, I think it's, it's going to be really surprising to you. And if you are in the US,

00:03:51.600 even if you are in our generation, millennials, like we're, we're in our, in our mid to late thirties,

00:03:57.160 you're going to find that, oh my God, even in my childhood, my school was an MLM because I realized

00:04:05.260 this myself. So basically there are many ways in which schools are acting like MLMs. One of the big

00:04:11.500 ones that I think is the most egregious is that schools are being used to shill private companies'

00:04:17.280 products. And this is in the, in the form of fundraisers, which I don't know if you experienced,

00:04:23.360 Malcolm, because I don't think you ever went to public school. I did go to public school. I went

00:04:27.080 to a lot of public school. Okay. So you went to public school and then you were sent into like

00:04:29.940 the prison camps and systems. So like- No, no. I went to public school, then private school,

00:04:33.960 then prison camp. Were you ever in, for your public school or even for private school,

00:04:38.860 like sent out to sell wrapping paper or chocolates? Yeah, I was. Yeah. And we'd also do

00:04:45.180 fundraisers with families. We'd also do fundraisers for little toys. We do. Yeah. So there's a,

00:04:51.920 the, this is a very common practice in, in us public schools. I did it too. I sold wrapping paper

00:04:57.900 and I sold C's candies to raise money for my school. I cannot remember what it was possibly for,

00:05:02.960 but there's a really great planet money episode. This is a podcast affiliated with the NPR.

00:05:08.860 Right. It's like other companies that run them. Yeah. It's other companies. So the episode that

00:05:15.080 the planet money did investigating these was called the secret world behind school fundraisers and

00:05:20.780 turning kids into salespeople, which it addresses the open secret that school fundraisers are a

00:05:27.240 staple of American education, which I think people just don't really think about. It talks about how

00:05:31.480 students are often incentivized to sell products like popcorn or chocolate or wrapping paper with the

00:05:36.800 promise of prizes, sometimes extravagant prizes, but usually way less valuable than the effort

00:05:42.080 required. And the episode follows Villanova Elementary School in it's in California. It's

00:05:50.160 just a normal, totally middle of the road, California elementary school. They show how fundraising

00:05:55.860 is needed for things not covered by the official budget, like especially field trips, which kind of

00:06:02.140 makes our son's field trip being canceled very indicative of this. What was the field trip supposed

00:06:07.100 to be too? And why was it canceled? Some kind of Dutch theater. It seems cute and wholesome and

00:06:13.600 adorable, but yeah, they're not doing that anymore. So it doesn't matter. And the PTA, apparently the

00:06:19.520 Parent Teachers Association plays a really pivotal role in deciding to do these because they want like

00:06:24.000 cool things for their kids. And they're just not seeing it happen. So they're turning to these

00:06:27.660 private companies as a fundraiser, which is really kind of lame because they're only getting really

00:06:33.140 small cuts of this. So while schools receive substantial funding per student, mostly spend on

00:06:38.560 salaries and basic operations, principals have limited discretionary funds. So budget rules often

00:06:43.460 restrict spending. And this is why PTA raised money plays such a valuable function in this. Here's what's

00:06:51.160 not mentioned in the episode because Planet Money, being NPR affiliated, being a generally progressive

00:06:56.660 podcast does not, I guess, want to anger teachers unions, but teachers unions are really the ones

00:07:04.460 that are tying school districts money on how money can be spent. And in basically insisting the money

00:07:09.800 needs to be spent on teachers pensions and teachers unions and all these things that really restrict

00:07:14.380 school's ability to buy basic school supplies or, you know, send the kids on field trips or do any of

00:07:21.960 the fun things that a school should have discretionary spending to do. Now the, the, the fundraising

00:07:26.540 companies, they, they compete for PTA business. So they will actively market to parent-teacher

00:07:32.020 associations and entice members with things like dinners and super easy logistics. So they'll like

00:07:37.940 take a mom out and be like, Oh, like this will, this will make so much money. And the kids will have

00:07:42.660 so much fun. But the typical split is about 40% to the school, 60% to the company. So you're,

00:07:50.320 you're really wasting people's time with this. Like people should really just be donating money

00:07:53.880 and the value to, yeah, the value returned to schools is really not great at all. And of course

00:07:59.140 the kids are mostly selling to family and friends. They're not going to door to door, but I used to

00:08:02.940 go door to door. I don't know if you did. I remember we were encouraged to by the organizations.

00:08:08.020 I always thought it seemed like an enormous waste of time. Because it is because the, again,

00:08:12.560 like the school is only getting, and this is in, in like a nicer situation around 40%.

00:08:17.380 And the reason, the reasoning why, and what they're trying, like at least what these companies

00:08:22.100 are telling to parent-teacher associations and parents is, Oh, well, like people don't want to

00:08:26.960 donate to a fundraiser, but people will find it more fun to sell, you know, like wrapping paper

00:08:34.660 and popcorn. Cause everyone likes popcorn. Who doesn't want to buy popcorn?

00:08:39.200 Does the NPR piece go over? There's a 40, 60 split.

00:08:41.960 Yeah. Yeah. They're open about that. The one thing that I criticize them for is not really

00:08:47.920 talking about the role that teachers unions take in like taking all the money that isn't

00:08:53.940 associated with student outcomes or student benefits, that it's all just going to teacher

00:08:58.400 union. It's absolutely not that they're not getting enough money. American schools get more

00:09:03.140 money per student than I think almost anywhere on earth.

00:09:05.480 So if you combine secondary, tertiary, and primary education, we're the second highest spending

00:09:09.580 nation on earth after Luxembourg. Yeah. Yeah.

00:09:12.540 It is that they are not spending it well. They are wasting it on the union.

00:09:16.240 Yeah. It's being wasted on really stupid stuff. So the, but the, the, like sort of the, 1.00

00:09:20.200 where the planet money team leaves it is like, Oh, well this system persists because people prefer

00:09:25.560 to give when there's excitement and visible reward and community involvement, like in the,

00:09:30.420 in the episode itself, which I'll link to in my show notes, which is available for our paid

00:09:35.120 Patreon and sub stack subscribers. Thank you so much. You guys it's, they, they talk about

00:09:40.720 like, they, they, I think they include like some, some audio from an assembly where they're like,

00:09:45.640 yeah, like let's go, you know, like they make it's, it's a total MLM thing. It's like those stupid MLM, 0.99

00:09:51.260 like motivational speeches. It's insane that they're doing this in schools, wasting students time for 1.00

00:09:57.460 this, but guess what you think? Oh, so this is like, okay. That it's just pretty bad that this happens

00:10:02.620 in school. But I mean, like, this is something that PGA puts together. Like maybe it happens for

00:10:07.420 a portion of the year. I remember we did it twice a year in my middle school. That is not the only

00:10:12.700 fundraiser that's happening at your school. Like I said, our son has come home to us for, with three

00:10:17.840 asks so far this week. Okay. Hold on, hold on. It's not just that now. Now they're doing stuff

00:10:23.520 like for our kids, they'll give them computers to take home on days when like schools cancel for the

00:10:27.760 days. Didn't even include that. You're supposed to like learn on this home computer, except the

00:10:32.820 apps, which are games for the kids to play on require a subscription to pay. And of course,

00:10:38.060 you know, the parents, the kids are just going to ask the parents, sign me up for this.

00:10:42.120 Yeah. I, I, yeah, I didn't even include that. So that's another one. Here's some other examples

00:10:46.040 is, is, is walkathons and readathons. So I had this, this fight with our son Octavian last night

00:10:52.280 about a readathon that his school is doing the way that these work is with a walkathon or a readathon.

00:10:58.600 Basically walkathon and readathons are, they've been held at us public schools since like the 1970s.

00:11:04.580 And they got really popular starting in the 1980s. And, and they're meant to sort of like encourage

00:11:11.820 healthy activity or like encourage kids to read like, so drive literacy, drive physical fitness

00:11:18.440 by getting kids to pledge to walk a certain distance. And then you, you have your friends

00:11:23.580 and neighbors and families say, well, I'll give you this many dollars per mile walked or per book

00:11:29.460 read. And then those dollars are, are funds that you donate to the school. So this, this, in this case,

00:11:35.900 at least it's directly donated to the school, but it's still the school trying to raise funds for

00:11:40.960 discretionary spending again, because they're not there. Their money is tied up by teachers unions,

00:11:45.280 basically, and other rules. By the way, the way I want to handle the walkathons and stuff like that

00:11:49.700 with our kid, just so he doesn't have to go and walk for no money is just on the days of the walkathon

00:11:53.940 and as we won't send them to school. Well, but here's the problem with the readathon. And here's

00:11:58.480 the funny thing is like, oh, this encourages physical fitness. This encourages reading activity.

00:12:03.100 Okay. So Octavian last night is like, well, mom, you have to, you have to give me money for the

00:12:08.100 readathon. And I'm like, okay, fine. Like read a book. And he's like, well, fine. And he like goes

00:12:14.780 and grabs a book, you know, one of the, one of the books that we read to them that they really

00:12:18.340 like the X for geniuses books. And he chooses the optical physics one or optical, whatever.

00:12:23.920 And, and he, he, he starts signing up pages and stuff, but he starts getting really frustrated.

00:12:28.000 And because, you know, he's still like in that standing out stuff and the phonics stuff. And it's

00:12:32.820 just, you know, he didn't feel like doing it. He didn't want to read the book. And he's like,

00:12:36.700 it's a readathon. You don't have to read books for it. And I'm like, Octavian, the whole point

00:12:41.780 is you have to read books. But he's like, no, it's about getting prizes. It's very clear to me

00:12:48.180 that the way that this is being sold to the kids in school is not, oh, reading is great. Let's read

00:12:53.640 more books. We love reading, you know, like show how much. It's not about prizes, mom. It's not about

00:12:59.080 reading. No, literally, literally. I, I, I didn't have my phone right next to me. So I couldn't film him

00:13:04.240 yelling at me about this, but he was getting so mad. He was like, no, you know how like you get really

00:13:09.580 confident when you're like mad at me and you think that I'm wrong. He's like, you're obviously

00:13:13.180 wrong. He was doing that to me. All right, buddy. Tell me about this readathon. This readathon,

00:13:19.420 like my teacher said, you don't have to read for readathon. Okay. So what do you do for readathon?

00:13:27.180 We just don't have to like read and we can do all this stuff. What's, well, what is this stuff?

00:13:34.620 It's a game board. It's a game board? Yeah, that we have to fill up. If we fill up all of it and save

00:13:43.020 $200, then we're sure we're getting a 12 feet, a star one. If we save them for $2,000. Oh, okay.

00:13:54.780 Yeah, we need to get the most donations. And why do you want the most donations? Because we get,

00:14:00.880 because if we don't get that many donations, then somebody else is going to be in first place.

00:14:10.000 And how do you fill out the game map? We need to do all the stuff it says.

00:14:15.680 Well, what's the stuff in a readathon?

00:14:19.600 It is.

00:14:20.160 You read books, right? No, you don't have to.

00:14:27.920 We're just like, no, mom, obviously, it's not about reading. It's about the prison.

00:14:32.560 And I was just getting so mad. And I'm like, yeah, clearly, this is not the,

00:14:36.880 the, the, ooh, we're just promoting literacy. Same with walk-a-thon. So my school,

00:14:43.600 Storytime, I don't think you knew about this, did a walk-a-thon.

00:14:47.520 So they, they had us do it on the naval base. It's, it's in Alameda, the abandoned naval base.

00:14:53.520 So guess what happens? One of the kids steps on a bees nest, but it turns out to be a really large

00:15:01.760 one. And it turns out to be killer bees. We were in the news. It was great. I remember walking,

00:15:07.200 you know, and it's in the heat, you know, it was, it was, it was close to summer by that point,

00:15:11.440 or it was like right after summer break. I can't remember which, but it was hot. We're like walking on

00:15:15.760 this old airstrip on a naval base in the Bay area. You know, this is like, you know,

00:15:20.720 it's like walking in circles in prison camp. You know, this is not like a fun activity. It's,

00:15:25.040 it's like making children trudge to raise money. And then suddenly there are ambulances,

00:15:31.440 people are running and I'm just kind of confused. And yeah, just, everyone's just like, like panicking

00:15:38.800 and trying to run away from a very large swarm of bees. Fortunately, nobody died, but we, yeah,

00:15:46.720 we, we did make the news. So that was very, everyone was very excited about the news. That was great.

00:15:50.960 So yeah, this is open the box.

00:16:05.920 This is what says American public schools at their finest.

00:16:25.200 Yeah. I don't know if this is when they started calling them Africanized bees. I don't remember

00:16:31.360 when that whole thing happens. That sounds racist. That was, yeah, it was really hilarious.

00:16:35.600 And then I don't know if you, you realize Africanized, I feel like it's the new 1.00

00:16:40.080 unoffensive term for African-Americans.

00:16:47.600 Oh God, I just can't.

00:16:49.360 To be like, it's to remind you that they're humans.

00:17:00.480 Yeah. So the, yeah, the other thing that, that Octavian and it, you know, honestly, he just,

00:17:05.920 they must repeat this to the kids so much at school because he sounded like a recording.

00:17:10.320 He was like, and also tomorrow is school photo retake day, where if you don't like the photo

00:17:16.000 that you got of me, then you can have another one taken tomorrow. And remember how he, he took home.

00:17:22.080 So school photos get taken in American schools. This, this stems from a tradition that was totally

00:17:28.960 normal where like in back in the day, back when photos were first invented, you know, groups of

00:17:35.520 students would go out to the front of the school in pose and have their photos taken to like, remember,

00:17:40.960 you know, and, and, and typically it was like, Joe, you know, Phillip's dad who had his

00:17:48.000 his special camera would, you know, take a picture and then, you know, make copies for people. Maybe

00:17:52.160 people would pitch in to pay for the paper or whatever. Right. But like, you know, and then,

00:17:57.520 and then of course, you know, got to the point where some local photographers started, you know,

00:18:02.400 well, Hey, I'll come to the school. I'll take everyone's photo professionally. And then some

00:18:06.800 larger companies were like, Hey, like, I'll, I'll be like, I'll, I'll come and I'll bring a

00:18:10.800 backdrop, you know, I'll, I'll be more professional about it. And we'll do a class photo. And then they

00:18:15.360 started doing individual photos of the students because, you know, people didn't have cameras

00:18:19.120 back then. Right. So they're like, well, then I'll, you know, I will take a photo of you and then,

00:18:23.280 you know, every year you can buy a photo of your kid that was professionally done. And now

00:18:26.960 I'll convince the school to let me go in and do it by sharing some of my profit with them. Okay.

00:18:32.880 So I don't know if you knew this, but schools are sharing in the profit of school photos at this

00:18:37.920 point. And it's still today. Of course, it's certainly major private equity companies that

00:18:42.160 are doing well. Yeah. Yeah. So actually life touch is the company that took my photos as a kid. Did

00:18:49.920 they take your photos as a kid? I don't know. For me, it was always life touch. And for our son,

00:18:55.200 it's life touch at his public school. They've even made it now into daycares. I don't know if you

00:18:59.760 remember, but at kinder care, when our children were in daycare, life touch also descended upon

00:19:04.960 their facility and defended upon the, yes, yes. Well, they did. And life touch is, is just a giant,

00:19:14.000 you know, faceless company that, that interrupts the school day. And now it is sort of like the,

00:19:20.000 the one big company there's, there is no other school photo company. The bigger thing has been

00:19:25.200 providing school photos since 1936, when it was founded as national school studios in Minnesota.

00:19:32.560 And, and yeah, I mean, the company's basically been in continuous operation for nearly 90 years,

00:19:38.240 but then it started to acquire and just roll up all of the, the, the small, like little companies.

00:19:46.640 And the way that it works now is it negotiates a contract with every single school district

00:19:52.400 and their earnings range from as little as 15% to as high as 50%. Like some school districts have

00:20:00.080 gotten wise to this and they've like literally made rules where like, we will accept nothing less

00:20:04.320 than 50%, but some school districts are total rubes and they just like allow themselves to be totally

00:20:09.360 fleeced over and make me like 15%. And what's what I, as an outsider, start a company that takes

00:20:18.880 school pictures and then go to the school districts and be like, and offer more 75%.

00:20:23.440 Because they have these like binding contracts. I think, you know, they're just like so used to it,

00:20:27.360 but they're just, they're so bad. So let me, let me share with you just because you might think,

00:20:33.440 oh, well, these are professional photos, right? Like, you know, it's nice to have your kid

00:20:36.960 professionally photographed. Let me show you the professional photos of our, our children

00:20:44.160 that are just so great. Really, really fantastic. Oh my God. He looks, I'm not even going to put

00:20:51.200 these on screen. They look so bad. You need to put them in. My favorite is this one that they got

00:20:56.320 of Torsten. He, he just looks absolutely like a prisoner that, you know, like hold up the newspaper.

00:21:03.120 I also found one of you, Malcolm, here you go. That's just, yeah. Amazing photo. Just,

00:21:15.200 they really nailed it. Nailed it with the purple background. That's just great. And here's, here's,

00:21:21.920 here's all Simone life touch. Just absolutely fantastic. So yeah. 0.86

00:21:29.840 You can tell they're our kids. I'll tell you that. I, I'm just, I'm just trying to argue,

00:21:35.280 like there's absolutely no justification for, for shoving these upon parents, showing them to kids,

00:21:42.320 interrupting the school school day, but it doesn't end there. There's also the scholastic book fairs,

00:21:47.120 scholastic book fairs. Oh my God, the book fairs are such a scam at the kids. No, but hold on,

00:21:52.160 Simone, before you go further with all this, something I need to emphasize to the listener here is our

00:21:57.200 kids. Remember nothing, nothing from school. This is all you hear about. Literally nothing

00:22:06.240 in school that I am aware of. I am not aware of any reading. We, all the reading he does,

00:22:10.000 he learned from us, right? The little bit of time we spend on it with him. With that being the case,

00:22:15.600 he can remember the book fair stuff like verbatim. He can remember five pitches in like one day that he

00:22:24.960 got over the course of that day. It is as if they are teaching the children literally nothing with

00:22:32.160 the MLM pitches anymore. I mean, sales is always be closing, right? I mean, like to a certain extent.

00:22:38.720 Okay. I guess like it's kind of the book fair thing. This actually, for me specifically what it,

00:22:44.800 what it has done is I just saw it. Maybe it's his personality. He's too young. Maybe he just can't

00:22:51.840 remember whatever he's doing in school. And now what I'm realizing is they are doing nothing of

00:22:58.160 value. And so I now have this, this perspective, Simone, where you can tell me if you, if you want

00:23:03.680 to push back on this, but I'm really thinking maybe at the end of this year, we just pull him out and I

00:23:08.160 don't know if we should send the other kids. And the reason I'm saying this is because it is actually

00:23:13.360 a lot of our time to send him to school. And if instead of waiting on the school bus every morning,

00:23:18.880 I just spent 30 minutes teaching him to read more education than going to the school.

00:23:24.080 I mean, I'm, no, I'm being very serious, Simone. Like, no, I know, I know you're being serious.

00:23:29.920 And then other than that, we put on documentaries or something, right? Like I can't until he gets

00:23:34.240 proficient enough at reasoning to use Parasia.io, which is our alternate school system. Anyone who

00:23:38.000 has kids of school age, there's actually already kids who are doing their education on Parasia,

00:23:41.360 which is really cool. Yeah. Um, which I like that we're able to offer that to people.

00:23:47.520 Listen, the only reason Octavian is in school is because he asked to. I don't know if he's going

00:23:52.320 to ask to. Not anymore. He asked to originally. Does he still ask to? He's asking to go.

00:23:58.000 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He asked to again this year. So I, but I also feel like he might be getting on

00:24:03.840 the edge of it at this point. Simone, I think the problem with how you're asking him is you are

00:24:08.400 asking him at the end of a period where he hasn't been to school in a long time and he's excited.

00:24:11.840 You ask him. You should ask him while he's in school. Yeah. Ask him tonight. Ask him tonight.

00:24:18.400 Great. So anyway, Scholastic Book Fairs, they've been held in public schools in the United States

00:24:23.440 since 1989, in 1981, when Scholastic purchased the California Book Fairs, which was a company

00:24:30.320 and began organizing in-school book fairs nationwide. So California School Book Fairs was a company that made

00:24:36.320 money by selling books directly to students and families at school-hosted events. Schools that

00:24:41.120 host Scholastic Book Fairs generally receive, you want to guess how much they get in profit?

00:24:47.200 25%? Yeah, actually you nailed it. Either, either 25% of the total sales as cash profit or 50% as

00:24:58.560 Scholastic dollars, which is a form of store credit usable for educational materials you purchase from

00:25:05.760 Scholastic. That are already overcharging. Yeah. Because they're, they're immensely overpriced by

00:25:11.280 the way. Yeah. So, so yeah, it's, it's, it is, MLM. I don't know what else to say. Now keep in mind,

00:25:17.600 the 25% cut only comes with the highest tier of compensation. You have to say, sell over $2,500 in

00:25:27.360 books in your school to get that cut. Otherwise you're getting a lower percentage. And I just want to be

00:25:33.520 clear that, well, okay, profit to schools nationwide totals approximately $2 million annually.

00:25:41.680 Scholastic makes a lot more because considering that's of the 25% at best that schools are getting.

00:25:48.440 Yeah. And I bet they're also counting schoolistic dollars in this, which totally don't count.

00:25:53.220 Yeah. Totally don't count. So Scholastic Corporation, while actually I think it's Shutterstock

00:25:58.560 owns LifeTouch now, they, they bought them. So we don't know how much a margin that they're making

00:26:03.520 that the school photos company, Scholastic Corporation is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ

00:26:09.120 under the ticker SCHL and its gross profit margins have been very strong with the latest 12 months

00:26:16.820 figure being around 55.8%. Growth. So these guys are making a lot of money. Wait, wait, 55.8% growth.

00:26:26.300 Gross profit margins. Oh, gross profit. They're profit margins. Yeah. Yeah. So to just like,

00:26:34.200 this is, this is absolutely ridiculous. This is again, for, for discretion. Shut it down. 0.52

00:26:39.020 Shut it down. I call shenanigans. Shenanigans. What's all this? Officer Parbrady, I would like

00:26:45.100 to reinstate my previous shenanigans. This whole carnival is a rip up. You know, uh, excuse me,

00:26:49.440 but I agree. These rides are really stupid. Okay. Let's calm down. People of South Park, 1.00

00:26:54.260 do you declare shenanigans on the carnival people? Yeah. Okay. Carnival people, do you

00:26:59.400 accept this decree of shenanigans? What are you talking about? This whole town is screwy.

00:27:05.440 Well, that settles it. Everybody grab a broom. It's shenanigans. 0.91

00:27:08.940 Schools need more money, but schools need more money. And so people might be like, okay, well,

00:27:19.420 yeah, you know, well, then we just need to give schools more money. Then they won't be so desperate

00:27:23.000 to raise money. More spending does not produce better outcomes first and foremost. And this is

00:27:28.060 summarized really well by an essay that just came out from Emile Kierkegaard. I mean, at least as of

00:27:32.960 recording, I, it came in my inbox this morning and inspired this whole episode actually titled

00:27:38.040 against the economists on school spending in which he highlights how large randomized controlled trials

00:27:45.160 on educational interventions almost always show no or negligible benefits. So he he's trying to,

00:27:52.400 in this essay, critique common claims that economists and educational policy circles make

00:27:58.160 that increasing school spending significantly improve student outcomes and particularly test

00:28:04.200 scores. He references major studies like the Coleman report showing that parental background

00:28:09.920 and socioeconomic status matter much more than school variables for student achievement and that

00:28:15.740 school related factors contribute only about 10% of outcomes, which I mean, when you consider how

00:28:20.900 much money actually goes to these things is ridiculous. He highlights meta-analyses and prominent

00:28:25.560 studies frequently cited by economists, noting that the effect sizes for increased spending on test

00:28:30.460 scores are extremely small, typically 0.030 standard deviations per 1000 per people or even less.

00:28:41.040 And the results are often muddled by bias p-hacking and publication bias in the literature.

00:28:46.040 He's super, super skeptical of complex economist studies employing complicated statistical techniques

00:28:52.920 to claim causal effects. He prefers large, simple randomized control studies because obviously there's this

00:28:59.080 huge bias in academia to support spending on academia.

00:29:02.200 Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll ask the teachers how much money they need. 0.99

00:29:05.560 Yeah. Yeah. And he also points to examples such as massive funding boosts for Abbott districts in New

00:29:11.000 Jersey, Mark Zuckerberg's donation to Newark schools, and LeBron James' high-profile Akron school

00:29:17.060 all failed to improve achievement gaps in test scores. And I can also share with you some of the graphs.

00:29:24.840 So he shared, you can include them in the episode that shows some of the data here. Hold on.

00:29:31.500 I'm trying to drag them into what's happening. My mouse is not responding to my dead finger.

00:29:36.340 All right. So here's one and here's the other. So what we're looking at here is simulated district

00:29:47.800 level expenditures versus test scores when $1,000 increases student scores. What we're looking at

00:29:54.160 is a graph that's showing absolutely no effects of money and test outcomes. And this is something

00:30:00.860 that was put together by community.

00:30:01.720 Oh, my God. It's like literally no effect. It's literally no effect.

00:30:04.740 No effect. Oh, my God. And then there's another one that

00:30:07.420 that Kierkegaard put together, 10th grade math test scores per people expenditure for institutional

00:30:13.020 salaries. What about this one? It shows it go down some at the end here.

00:30:17.560 Yeah. Like really high levels. It actually knocks the scores down.

00:30:21.100 Yeah. It is embarrassing to say the least.

00:30:24.840 I bet you know they're inner city schools or something, though.

00:30:26.940 Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to argue that teachers-

00:30:30.060 No, actually, they're not inner city schools. I can tell you exactly why they're going down.

00:30:32.600 You can tell from the graph. Can you tell? Actually, I want to play a little experiment,

00:30:36.160 Simone. Can you tell why the blue graph has the numbers go down at the higher level of

00:30:41.140 spending? Because the sample's smaller? No. Okay. So if you notice, it appears in striated bands.

00:30:49.780 Yeah, it does. Yeah. In bands. Yeah. And the heaviest band is where the number goes down a lot.

00:30:55.160 That heavy band is likely a student union, a teacher's union. And that teacher's union is

00:31:01.220 collectively getting a specific price per student as a way that they work and knocking the score

00:31:08.620 its way down. Well, and this is actually the perfect segue because I am now to my key argument

00:31:15.740 here, which is that teachers- Wait, are you going to go to the Mississippi school district or should

00:31:18.920 I do that? The what specific school district? Mississippi.

00:31:22.800 Oh, no. I'm not going to. No, because that's a whole podcast.

00:31:25.940 Come on. Well, I should briefly go over it. So recently, the Mississippi school district,

00:31:29.840 one of the lowest funded school districts in the United States- Mississippi is a whole state.

00:31:33.840 The state, whatever. The state is getting the highest test scores on reading levels,

00:31:38.740 specifically if you adjust for the ethnic groups in the state, which is to say that typically black

00:31:44.580 kids get lower reading scores than white kids. I'm not saying that this is due to genetic reasons

00:31:47.860 or anything. It's just this is a truism across the United States. And Mississippi has an unusually

00:31:51.440 large black population. And when you account for that, they have by far, I think, the best reading

00:31:56.060 levels in the United States, despite having very low spending. And it's just because they entered a new

00:31:59.560 program. And even in an absolute sense, I think they're like the third best reading in the United

00:32:04.180 States now, which is wild because they used to be a joke of an education system. And how did they do

00:32:09.640 it? They did not do it with a ton of extra spending. There was minor extra spending, but the major thing

00:32:14.360 that they did, but the extra spending was spent on specific programs, not an increase in teacher

00:32:18.860 salaries anywhere. And it was not letting kids graduate until they agreed until they actually met the

00:32:24.920 requirements to graduate that grade. Yeah. And yeah, anyway, though, back to back to the

00:32:31.700 scholarship troopers world where all the scores are posted on a board, which is what we need to do.

00:32:36.380 Yeah. So it's teachers unions in the U S that are just dragging schools down to hell. And this is

00:32:54.520 well illustrated by Tony Sinek in an article that he wrote in city journal a while back about the

00:32:59.920 California teachers association that provides a really good case study of this. It's called the

00:33:04.620 worst union in America. So in this article, Sinek argues that the California teachers association

00:33:10.100 is the single most powerful and problematic union in California and is central to the decline of

00:33:17.060 California's public education quality as it blocks education reform provides underperforming and

00:33:22.880 sometimes criminal educators and lobbies to inflate teacher salaries and benefits, creating fiscal

00:33:29.140 burdens for the state. I mean, and everyone knows California state spending is insane. I mean,

00:33:33.680 they're the ones that are about to try to tax billionaires, just like handle a little expense

00:33:38.600 for them. Daddy, literally they're like, daddy, I need an extra allowance. It's like you're a 36

00:33:45.740 year old. Well, I overspent a bit this month, daddy. And then they make so much money. It's a state that

00:33:51.660 I mean, it's like, it's bigger than what Japan's economy, so many nations economies. Anyway, we're running

00:33:56.720 out of time. So I got to keep going. The CTA's power surged after the RADA act in 1975, which allowed

00:34:02.720 collective bargaining for teachers. And then ever since then, it has used its growing membership

00:34:07.460 and financial resources, which are about 186 million in annual income, much of which you spend

00:34:13.620 on politics, to oppose reforms and control local school boards. I mean, this is such a powerful

00:34:19.500 organization. Notable CTA campaigns include blocking school choice initiatives and fighting measures like

00:34:25.740 class size reduction, which lead to costly results without educational improvements, and resisting efforts

00:34:31.740 to make teacher dismissal easier. Teacher dismissal, firing, firing bad teachers.

00:34:37.360 Firing bad teachers. Yeah.

00:34:38.200 I had, for example, like, and this is, I went to a California school, so I was subject to this

00:34:42.560 teacher's union. I remember this one biology teacher I had in high school who literally on the first day

00:34:48.600 of school was like, I am just waiting to get my pension. I am phoning it in. Do not bother me.

00:34:54.800 Go like, do your textbook, do your homework. I don't care. This was also a teacher when we had a

00:34:59.940 school shooter scare one day. I was in his class when it happened. He just hit the deck. No, no,

00:35:06.120 like attempt to tell us what to do or like protect us. He was just gone. He just bamfed. It was great.

00:35:12.680 Like, I do not care about children. I have made that known to my boss.

00:35:16.040 No, he really, no. Yeah. He was just like, I don't care. I am checked out. Do not bother me.

00:35:20.440 Like, because, and could he be fired? No, he couldn't be fired. Firing bad teachers in California

00:35:25.860 is extremely difficult due to union-backed rules. So teacher misconduct ranging from incompetence

00:35:31.200 to literal criminality rarely leads to termination. The article details incidents where union used

00:35:37.860 aggressive tactics to oppose vouchers, which is our key thing, and accountability measures and reforms,

00:35:45.140 including intimidation, costly ad campaigns, and political influence. So I'll quote from the article

00:35:51.200 here. In 1991, the CTA took to the ramparts again to combat Proposition 174, a ballot initiative that

00:35:58.560 would have made California a national leader in school choice by giving families universal access

00:36:04.120 to school vouchers. When initiative supporters began circulating the petitions necessary to get it

00:36:09.700 into the ballot, some CTA members tried to intimidate petition signers physically. The union also

00:36:16.420 encouraged people to sign the petition multiple times in order to throw the process into chaos. Just so you

00:36:22.720 know, the way that, like, things work with elections and stuff in the United States and with ballots, like,

00:36:28.260 they're very, very weird rules that will, like, disqualify a signature. Like, for example, we live in a

00:36:34.800 village, but if we, if we put our village name instead of our township name on a petition signature,

00:36:42.020 it disqualifies our entire signature, and it can invalidate, like, things like nominations for, for

00:36:47.700 legislation like this. So basically, they were misleading people in their directions to try to

00:36:52.540 throw off the entire petition campaign. So just really, really annoying. Let's see. Quote,

00:36:58.440 there are some proposals so evil that they should never go before the voters, explained D.A.

00:37:03.640 Weber, the CTA's president. So evil. School vouchers. They should never go before the voter. The voters

00:37:09.880 shouldn't have a choice. Yeah. One of the consultants who organized the petitions testified in a court

00:37:14.760 declaration at the time that people with union ties had offered him $400,000 to refrain from distributing

00:37:24.160 them. Another claim that the CTA member had tried to run him off the road after a debate on school

00:37:30.920 choice. All right? Like, the mob has nothing on these people. No, it's absolutely true. And they're

00:37:36.860 destroying children's lives. And one in, one, one in the recent CDC studies, one in 10 kids attempt to

00:37:42.860 unalive themselves on any given year in an American school system. One in 10 kids is graduating

00:37:47.200 S-Aid. You know, like, it's, it's bad. Yeah. So the CTA also funds various progressive causes,

00:37:53.800 totally unrelated to education. Oh, great. Oh, great.

00:37:56.040 Their political reach and discouraged dissent. So I'm also quitting from the article again.

00:38:00.680 Among these causes, implementing a single payer healthcare system in California,

00:38:05.040 blocking photo identification requirements for voters, and limiting restraints to the

00:38:09.660 governor's power of eminent domain. The CTA was the single biggest financial opponent to another

00:38:14.480 proposition, eight, the controversial 2008 proposal to ban gay marriage, ponying up 1.3 million to fight

00:38:21.780 the initiative. They'd eventually won 52.2% of the vote. The union has also become the biggest donor to

00:38:27.280 the California Democratic Party. From 2003 to 2012, the CTA spent nearly 102 million on political

00:38:33.120 contributions. 0.08 of that money went to Republicans. And setting points to the case of

00:38:39.200 Locke High School, which illustrates how union resistance can stifle reform. And it is, it is really

00:38:45.700 insane. So I also just want to read this real quick. Consider the case of Locke High School,

00:38:49.820 in the poverty-stricken Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Founded in response to the area's 1967

00:38:55.660 riots, Locke was intended to provide a quality education to the neighborhood's almost universally

00:39:00.440 minority students. For years, it failed. In 2006, with a student body that was 65% Hispanic and 35%

00:39:07.760 African American, the school sent just 5% of its graduates to four-year colleges, and the dropout rate

00:39:13.580 was nearly 51%. Shortly before Locke reached this nadir, the school hired a reform-minded

00:39:19.480 principal, Frank Wells, who was determined to revive the school's fortunes. Just a few days

00:39:24.100 after he arrived, a school of rival gangs got into the dust-up. Wells expelled 80% of the students

00:39:30.660 involved. In the new atmosphere of discipline, Locke dropped from the first number of campus crimes

00:39:36.720 reports in the LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District to 13th. So basically, this became a much

00:39:42.960 less crime-ridden campus. Test scores and college acceptance also began to rise. But trouble arose

00:39:49.460 with the union when Wells began requiring Locke teachers to present weekly lesson plans. The local

00:39:56.100 CTA affiliate, United Teachers Los Angeles, filed a grievance against him and was soon urging his

00:40:02.000 removal. The last straw was Wells' effort to convert Locke into an independent charter school,

00:40:08.260 where teachers would operate under severely restricted union contracts. In May 2007, the

00:40:14.500 district removed Wells from his job. He was escorted from his office by three police officers and an

00:40:20.440 associate superintendent of schools, all on the basis of union allegations that he had let teachers use

00:40:26.340 classroom time to sign a petition to turn Locke into a charter. Wells called the allegations a total

00:40:32.540 fabrication and the signature gatherers backed him up. The LAUSD reassigned him to a district office

00:40:38.940 where he was paid $600 a day to sit in a cubicle and do nothing. So they didn't even freaking fire him.

00:40:46.500 They did what every, you know, now like, because you can't fire people, right? Because this is the

00:40:50.700 school district. So let's just waste money, but like make him entirely feckless. So this is, it's just,

00:40:56.600 it's in short, the, the union backed policies jeopardize the fiscal security of California

00:41:02.000 schools. This is why schools don't have money. Okay. This is why they have turned themselves into

00:41:07.340 MLMs because literally corrupt unions are taking all the money for it. It's like, it's like if the

00:41:13.840 mafia ran your school system, I was just taking all the money for itself. Stronger stance against

00:41:19.200 teachers unions more broadly. Yeah. I think they don't realize how existentially dangerous they are to

00:41:24.040 our goals. Like our son's school is being run by the mafia and they're just taking all the money for

00:41:27.900 themselves. Meanwhile, his, his teachers are desperate to like do fun things for them, like

00:41:31.580 make fricking gingerbread houses. And they're begging us to give them packets of gingerbread

00:41:36.240 cookies, which we need to go by by the way, because I, I plunged gingerbread cookies or crackers anyway.

00:41:42.160 So basically the solution to this problem, because I got to go run and pick up our kids from school now,

00:41:46.620 the bus is about to drop them off is, is school choice. The only way to fight this is to allow

00:41:51.340 parents to take their tax dollars elsewhere, to private school, to charter schools, to home school,

00:41:56.000 and to give people an example of how much of a difference this makes, like how much this can

00:42:01.420 really signal to schools that like, Oh, I'm screwed. If I don't actually cater to the best interest of

00:42:07.420 students and keep the tax dollars with me, the public school. So how much does the average person,

00:42:12.800 the average American household pay annually in school district taxes to support public schools?

00:42:17.540 So in many states school funding relies heavily on local property taxes, even though keep in mind,

00:42:23.740 schools also receive state and federal funding. But this can represent up to 21% of the local

00:42:30.360 education budget is property taxes. In New Jersey, the average annual school tax per household is around

00:42:35.880 $6,200. In California, local property taxes funded about 21% of the education budget, but average

00:42:43.740 amounts per household could range from $1,000 to $10,000. Like the amount that you pay just on private

00:42:50.920 school in a year. Yeah. And in public school spending per student on average in the United States

00:42:55.960 is around $15,600 nationwide. Now imagine if that was portable. If a family was like, listen,

00:43:03.540 my public school isn't delivering. I'm going to take my $15,000 and I'm going to put it toward

00:43:08.940 homeschool. Like imagine if we could do that and put it toward homeschool to have the time to buy

00:43:14.040 that time and in the materials and stuff so that we could do this for our kids at home or that we

00:43:17.800 could send them to, you know, we can have a homeschooling pod or we can have a private school

00:43:23.040 or send them to a charter. You get five kids together, six kids together. That's $50,000 a year.

00:43:27.960 That's a teacher's salary, right? Like, yeah, exactly. You could hire a tutor, like a full-time

00:43:34.120 aristocratic style tutor, you know, like a really good one for your kids and they would

00:43:39.420 thrive. They would thrive. And, but more importantly, like, I don't want public schools

00:43:43.900 to disappear. I think public school teachers are amazing. They do really good work when the incentives

00:43:48.280 aren't poorly aligned. The problem is that there is no accountability. And if you allow for school

00:43:54.820 choice, you create that accountability. Suddenly schools have to compete for students because they'll

00:44:00.180 go away if they don't do a good job. And this aligns them around student outcomes instead of

00:44:05.200 teachers unions. So anyway, that's the solution. But until then, schools are an MLM. You're welcome

00:44:12.160 for my analysis. That makes sense. I love you. I'm convinced we're taking him out this winter.

00:44:19.420 It's bad. No, no, seriously. I think we should. I think that the straw that broke the camel's back

00:44:24.720 for me was seeing that he could, and they could teach him when it was to scam him or scam us.

00:44:30.180 They just couldn't teach him any information. And when I saw that, I was like, oh, F you guys.

00:44:36.340 Like, F you guys. It's bad. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, I, there's so many great people in the district. 0.94

00:44:43.240 We've met so many amazing families through his school. I feel so frustrated by it. But yeah,

00:44:48.840 anyway, I just didn't realize until doing this actual research how much of even my experience with

00:44:54.560 the public school system was related to these MLM programs, the, the, the, the walkathons and,

00:45:00.680 and the selling the wrapping paper and the selling the chocolates. And I'm like, wait a second. Like,

00:45:06.320 especially when you consider how much the average, because other school systems do not get this much

00:45:11.700 money. Anyway, got to run and get the kids. I love you very much, Malcolm.

00:45:15.040 Fascinating, right? Sense. I swear that like Indian deity with all the hands, all the hands. 1.00

00:45:25.500 And the advantage now of being a mom, it makes so much sense now. I get it. I get it. Okay. Sorry,

00:45:34.020 mister. Oh, his eyes are so wide. Oh, hungry eyes. Hungry eyes. All right. Okay. I'm so excited for

00:45:45.560 this one. How's it going? Good, man. Good. It's 56 degrees in our house. I can finally think straight.

00:45:55.480 You know, this is how I want it to be. What am I having for dinner tonight? I figured because we

00:46:03.400 still have a little more bok choy that we're going to do more of the, the, the beef. Do we have

00:46:08.740 thawed beef? Yeah. Okay. Great. I've been slowly dosing it out because I, I just put one of the,

00:46:16.000 one of the two large bags that I created in our handier freezer. So we live such an abundant life.

00:46:24.380 We have two freezers. This is crazy. The recipe you did yesterday was fantastic. It was bok choy

00:46:29.700 with a fantastically tender fried, pan fried beef. And what are the bean sprouts with some seared

00:46:37.220 peppers? Oh, you know what? Actually, I don't have any thawed out beef. Do you just want,

00:46:42.840 Oh, what if I made you just the, the stir fried vegetables, but then like tamago rolls?

00:46:50.620 I think it'd be better with a fried egg or two fried eggs. Oh, just like a fried egg on top.

00:46:54.800 Oh, that sounds fun. Okay. Let's just do that. What are you learning about? Are you seeing my

00:46:58.620 amazing meal here that mommy made me? You ever had a meal like that?

00:47:07.140 Are you guys all having too much coughing because of the pepper?

00:47:09.520 Oh, this is what the family suffers for my flavor.

00:47:22.100 Let's just, just save the beef. Cause I mean, that's, it was expensive.

00:47:26.920 The beef was trivially expensive compared to how many meals it's making.

00:47:31.060 Yeah, but it was still like $50 worth of beef.

00:47:34.360 Yeah.

00:47:34.800 We're stretching it out, but still.

00:47:37.780 I've literally eaten it almost every day for the past two weeks, Simone.

00:47:41.700 I know, I know. And you're not even, you're not even halfway through it.

00:47:45.800 So, well, actually that, yeah.

00:47:48.760 Considering how much people spend on just like DoorDash for one night, nevermind.

00:47:54.620 But for our budget, these, these are lean times, Malcolm.

00:47:57.580 Um, anyway, we'll, we'll get into it.

00:48:02.180 I will assume my outline scrolling and feeding position.

00:48:07.960 I think I got this.

00:48:09.680 I'm not making it okay.

00:48:10.480 Oh, I can just, all right.

00:48:12.940 There we go.

00:48:14.080 Yeah.

00:48:15.820 You just put the bottle in the armpit trick works.

00:48:20.440 It's fine.

00:48:21.780 Okay.

00:48:22.640 Here we go.

00:48:23.300 Bye.

00:48:41.780 Bye.

00:48:42.320 Bye.

00:48:42.460 Bye.

00:48:43.020 Bye.

00:48:43.220 Bye.

00:48:43.700 Bye.

00:48:44.360 Bye.

00:48:45.200 Bye.

00:48:45.420 Bye.

00:48:46.040 Bye.

00:48:47.560 Bye.

00:48:51.300 Bye.

00:48:51.900 Bye.

Based Camp - November 26, 2025

US Public School is Not Bad—It’s A SCAM!

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